


Things to Do in a Bar at the End of the World

by Selenay



Category: Hawkeye (Comics)
Genre: Apocalypse, Female Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Hopeful Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 06:19:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2802593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Selenay/pseuds/Selenay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica had never been a big drinker, but the end of the world didn't seem like a thing that should be faced sober. Not when it was probably going to be the end for real this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things to Do in a Bar at the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



> My recipient asked for Kate and Jessica, explorations of character dynamics, H/C, and no schmoop. I'm really hoping I didn't accidentally write a fluffy end of the world fic, but my lovely beta assures me I didn't. Hopefully this works for you. Happy holidays!
> 
> Thanks to the wonderful C for beta-ing this.

Jessica had never been a big drinker, but the end of the world didn't seem like a thing that should be faced sober. Not when it was probably going to be the end for real this time.

The apocalypse.

The end of all things.

There had been so many times before when it had seemed like everything was over, but they'd always pulled it back just in time. Sometimes, they'd pulled it back before it even started, and the only traces left were the stories that the saviour du jour told about the other timeline.

Not this time.

It had been the beginning of the end for too long.

The bar's sign was as dead as everything else in this part of New York. It had probably been a bright, happy place six months ago, before everything started to go wrong. Jessica pushed the door open, shoving it past the debris piled up behind it and wincing at the scraping sounds echoing down the silent street. She slipped inside, squeezing through the narrow gap, and came face to pointy end with an arrow.

Lifting her gaze slowly, Jessica took in the deep purple of the bow drawing back the arrow, the filthy coat sleeve on the arm holding it, and the clean arm guard strapped over it.

The torn purple lapel.

The grimy throat that had always been so clean and lilac-scented.

The dark hair drawn back in a ponytail.

The purple band holding escaping strands away from a dirt streaked face.

Jessica lifted a hand and offered a small wave. "Hello, Kate. Fancy meeting you here."

The arrow didn't waver. Kate's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You're really you?"

Jessica was painfully aware of how sharp that arrow tip was, but she slowly crossed her heart anyway. "Swear it's me. Really. Scout's honour and everything."

Kate snorted. "You were never a Scout."

She lowered the arrow anyway, relaxing the tension on the bow string but not unnocking it. Not yet. There was still too much strain showing under the dirt on her face.

"Okay, I wasn't," Jessica said. "But I still promise that I'm me. See, I've still got the costume and everything."

Moving carefully, she pulled her coat open to reveal the tattered, filthy remains of her red and yellow costume. Kate squinted at it, but enough of the pattern must have shown through the damage to convince her.

There weren't many people right now who would dare to wander around wearing superhero costumes. Only people dumb enough to be unwilling to give them up, even though any sensible person would have burned them when it became obvious superheroes were no use. Jessica was wearing jeans over the skin-tight leggings, though, and her coat hid the top if she kept it buttoned high enough. She'd lost the cowl a few weeks ago. She was dumb enough to keep her costume, but not foolish enough to wear it out and proud.

Who would have thought, Jessica Drew was being one of the sensible ones.

Kate lowered the bow completely and plucked the arrow off the string, shoving it into the quiver at her waist that was mostly hidden under her coat. Her fingers were shaking.

"What are you doing here?" Kate asked.

Jessica shrugged. "What does anyone do in a bar?"

"I thought you'd still be out saving the world."

"There isn't much to save," Jessica said. "And there isn't anyone to punch or threaten. Saving the world is tricky when the end started six months ago and nobody can stop it."

Under her feet, the floor trembled for a moment, the vibration subtle enough that most people wouldn't notice. Kate's brows pulled together. Of course she noticed. Jessica stayed frozen in place until she was sure the tremor wasn't going to lead to something more.

Something more, like the ground opening up and swallowing the bar.

She'd seen that kind of thing happen too many times already. Tried to save too many people before the earth snapped closed over them.

Failed to save them too often.

"I guess you've got a point," Kate said. "You might be out of luck, though. This place seems to have been cleaned out."

"Looks can be deceiving," Jessica said. "Give me five minutes."

It took less than five minutes to find a bottle of bourbon hidden under the smashed remains of a wooden crate. Whoever cleared the place out hadn't done a good job.

They had done a good job of smashing all the glasses, though. Kate must have been hiding out there for a day or two, at least, because she'd cleared a space at the far end of the bar where the counter hid her from view. A couple of torn blankets and a sleeping bag had been turned into a nest, and a small canvas backpack had been turned into a pillow.

Jessica sat next to Kate on the blankets, their backs against the scratched wood of some cupboards, and offered her the first sip of the bourbon. Kate shrugged and took a healthy swig.

"Guess it doesn't matter whether we're sober or not anymore," Kate said.

Jessica accepted the bottle and sipped. Her eyes watered as it burned down her throat. "I guess not. How did you end up hiding out here?"

"Clint's apartment was down the block from here." Kate stared straight ahead, her face giving nothing away.

Jessica's stomach lurched. "Was?"

"Don't worry, he got out," Kate said. "We lost track of each other a while ago, though. I've lost track of everyone. I figured that if I hid out somewhere around here, maybe someone I knew might come by. And you did."

"It wasn't deliberate," Jessica said. "I got turned around after the quake yesterday evening."

"So you hit the first bar you found?"

"I watched Avengers Tower fall into a new ravine yesterday," Jessica said. "A bar seemed like a good idea."

Kate sighed and thumped her head back against the cupboard door. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"Why are you sorry? It's not your fault."

Kate's bark of laughter was harsh and ugly, sending shivers down Jessica's spine.

"What's so funny?" Jessica asked.

Kate snatched the bottle out of her hands and swallowed a huge gulp that made her cough and gasp. Her voice was raw when she finally answered. "It turns out, I might actually be responsible for all this."

"You?"

Jessica eyed her incredulously. Kate Bishop had always been five feet five inches of sass and snark, a kid who grew up too fast and took on too many responsibilities, but she'd never been dangerous. Not that sort of dangerous, anyway.

Not world-ending dangerous.

"Me," Kate said. She started to lift the bottle to her lips, but she changed her mind, holding it out for Jessica to take. "And the irony of it--using that word correctly, for once--is that I ended the world by saving someone's life. Yay me."

"Oh." Jessica cautiously took the bottle away and put it down beside her, out of reach. "How did you do that?"

"The way we always do," Kate said. "A couple of days after I got back from LA, I saw someone in trouble. Some guys were kicking the shit out of this scrawny little kid in an alley, so I did what superheroes do, and saved his life. I got a busted nose and Clint got mad that I tested out the new putty arrows before they were ready, he said, but the kid lived and he only lost his spleen and one tooth, which wasn't bad for how much of the shit had already been kicked out of him when I got there."

Jessica could easily imagine it. She was pretty sure she'd done similar things a few times, although usually without the busted nose.

A lump of ice settled in her stomach as a thought occurred to her. "The kid, he wasn't..."

"Xander Docker?" Kate rolled her eyes. "Of course he was."

Xander Docker. AKA the man who ended the world. Jessica still wasn't entirely clear what his device was supposed to do. He'd made a big speech about enabling ordinary people to do what superheroes could do, but there had only been one shaky cell phone video of it and the transcript hadn't survived. The media had been more interested in what his device did, not why he'd made it. At least at first, anyway.

Whatever it was supposed to have done, it hadn't worked out for him. For the world.

It had taken a couple of months for people to turn on the superheroes. If communications hadn't gone down so fast, maybe they would have turned faster.

"You didn't know," Jessica said. "Nobody could have predicted what happened."

"I didn't even realise until a few weeks ago," Kate said. "I knew his face felt kind of familiar, but I didn't put it all together. I saved him years ago. Do you remember all the faces?"

Jessica shook her head. "I try...but no."

"I figured it out a few weeks ago," Kate said. "Apparently, lawyers and reporters are the only people who stay at their jobs when the world ends. Docker's lawyer tracked me down at Clint's place. He left me a shit ton of worthless money and a note, thanking me for the inspiration. And then I had to save him because Clint's building fell into a hole, which is probably some kind of commentary on this whole mess that I'm way too tired to think about. But the point is, I caused the end of the world."

Jessica tried to think of something comforting to say, but no words came. What platitudes could possibly cover something like this? She wanted to say that Kate hadn't caused the end of the world. She couldn't have predicted what Xander Docker would do. Except, if her actions had been his inspiration, then that would be a lie. Or at least, Kate would see right through whatever Jessica said. It wasn't her fault, she wasn't responsible for it, but she'd been a part of the beginning.

There were no meaningless platitudes for this, there were no comforting words. Jessica couldn't even think of a dumb joke to make, and she'd honed her talents for that over the years.

All she could think to do was wrap an arm around Kate's too-thin shoulders and breathe a sigh of relief when Kate didn't burst into tears.

"I guess you didn't give up," Kate said after a while.

Jessica shrugged awkwardly. "It's not what we do."

"Yeah." Kate slowly leaned her head against Jessica's, as though she was too tired to keep holding it up alone. "I was like that, back before I knew."

Jessica rubbed a soothing hand up and down the top of Kate's arm, pretending not to feel the tiny tears in the fabric of Kate's coat. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that everything was normal again. That she was sitting in Avengers Tower and, at any moment, someone was going to burst in with a great idea for how time travel could fix everything--

She frowned. Kate must have felt the new tension in her body, because she sat up straighter. Jessica could feel the intent, curious look Kate was throwing at her.

"What?" Kate asked.

"When all of this began," Jessica said, "Stark had this idea to travel back and stop Docker from turning on the device. It wouldn't have worked, because the machine was already built and someone would turn it on eventually even if he didn't. We tried to figure out whether there was some other point in time where we could change the outcome, but we couldn't find one."

"So?"

Jessica opened her eyes and grinned. "So, I think we just found the moment."

"Huh?" Kate's brows drew down, but her expression smoothed out as understanding filled her eyes. "Oh. _Oh_. You think that's the pivotal moment, when I saved his life."

"I think it's definitely the pivotal moment," Jessica said. "If that never happens, he never gets the inspiration. None of this happens."

Kate nodded. "Okay, I can see your point. But I can also see a couple of problems." She held up a finger. "If it's not the right moment, we could make everything five hundred times worse." A second finger rose. "Two, if Avengers Tower just got swallowed up, where do we get the tech and the people to time travel?" A third finger. "And how do we not cause one of those paradoxes Stark and Banner always used to talk about?"

"To take your points in order, I don't think there's many ways we could make things worse," Jessica said. "The world is ending. It doesn't get much worse than that."

"Point. But how do we even make it work?"

"The Baxter Building is still mostly functional," Jessica said. "I'm pretty sure that's where everyone who's left went. I got turned around and saw this bar; otherwise I'd be there, too."

"I'm glad you're not there."

"So am I." Jessica slowly withdrew her arm from Kate's shoulders, shaking out her hand to return some feeling to it. Kate might be too thin, but she was still heavy. "Except now we really need to be there, pronto."

Kate didn't quite smile, but the lines around her mouth under the layers of dirt softened slightly. "What about the paradox?"

"Eh, we'll let the physicists figure that out," Jessica said. "The important part is that now we know what needs to change. You can tell them when and where. The clever people can figure out the rest."

"Are we really going to save the world by letting someone die?"

For the briefest moment, Jessica was tempted to say yes. It would be the easiest way. It would be the way to guarantee absolutely that Xander Docker would never invent his device.

She couldn't, though. The costume she still wore, tattered and faded as it was, wouldn't let her. Some ideas were too deeply ingrained after fighting for so long to learn them, and she couldn't become that person.

Neither could Kate Bishop.

"We'll find a different way," Jessica said. "We'll stop him from ever walking into that alley, so he'll never see you saving his life."

"Think it'll work?"

"I think it's better than sitting in a smashed up bar with only one bottle of bourbon," Jessica said.

Kate nodded. "Okay then. That's what we'll do. Help me save the world?"

"We're nearly out of bourbon, so sure. What else do you do when the world's ending?"


End file.
